First came mechanical trucks, then route optimization, now fleet automation and tracking are the innovations that are revolutionizing the waste management industry. Running a profitable waste management business means keeping track of the small things that really add up at scale.

Here are the top 5 ways you could be losing money in your solid waste hauling business:

1. Don’t track your go-backs

You missed a stop. Or did you? A customer called with a complaint and you have no idea what the actual situation was: did the driver drive by? Or was the bin not out? Without understanding the reasons go-backs are happening, you don’t know how to reduce the number.

The Fix: With Routeware’s on-board computer system, you can access time-stamped photos of every stop to prove exactly what was on the curb – or not – at the time the driver came by. You will discover what happened so you know how to best address it.

2. Pick up Extras for no extra charge

An extra bag of yard debris here, a Christmas tree there, and an oversize item down the street: you’re doing more but not getting paid more. You can’t get your drivers to fill out paper logs, plus half the time, those sheets of paper never make it to the billing office anyway.

The Fix: With the Routeware system, recording an extra is as easy as the driver hitting a button and selecting the extra from a list. With integration directly into your billing system, extras get automatically added to your customer’s bill. And with Routeware’s picture-taking functionality, you have photographic proof of extras that are picked up, which will eliminate potential customer disputes.

3. Run more trucks than you need to

The more trucks the better, right? You know trucks aren’t cheap – not to buy, lease, insure, or maintain. So increase your fleet size but don’t increase your overall workload or efficiency and your money will disappear before you know it.

The Fix: Routeware’s system of on-board devices and back office software enables you to track your data to discover where you can be more efficient on your routes. If each driver could do 10% more stops without increasing hours, you could cut 10% of your fleet without reducing services.

4. Service customers who don’t pay

Great customer service is important to you but some customers are taking unfair advantage of that commitment. Not only that, investigating what happened when a customer does call to complain is taking loads of time, so your customer service costs just keep going up and up.

The Fix: With Routeware, not only will you know exactly what’s happening out in the field, you’ll have proof when a customer calls to complain. Your company’s fault? Admit it and make amends. But if not? Your access to indisputable route data gives you the info you need to remedy the issue.

5. Lose your good drivers

There’s a driver shortage and its effect on your business is enormous. You’re constantly searching out potential drivers and spending considerable resources training them, only to have them leave before long. The constant churn is costing you money, lowering staff morale, and causing you sleepless nights.

The Fix: While it may seem like micro-management at first, the reality is that drivers appreciate the efficiency gained by implementing automation, especially if you set up a driver reward system that you can now afford due to the money you’re no longer wasting.
Sometimes taking a step back to assess the state of your business can uncover potential improvements that can make an impact over time.

The top 5 reasons you might be wasting money above is the best place to start when examining areas of revenue leakage. Contact us today for a full revenue leakage assessment, and recommendations for performance improvement across your waste management business.

]]>Save Your Waste Hauling Business $200K This Year: Think in Minute Valuehttps://routeware.com/value-of-a-minute/
https://routeware.com/value-of-a-minute/#respondFri, 09 Mar 2018 20:12:06 +0000http://routewaredev.com/?p=775by Sloan Morris, Vice President So…what’s the value of a minute? To be more specific, we are asking: What is the economic value of one minute of time for waste collection fleets? And why should you

To be more specific, we are asking: What is the economic value of one minute of time for waste collection fleets? And why should you care?

Paying more attention to the operation minutes for your waste collection fleet – and looking at these minutes with a fresh perspective – can uncover surprising areas for savings optimization.

Take care of the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.

-American saying

Taking a fresh look at the minute-by-minute performance of your fleets can identify on-the-clock hours that can be better allocated, and pennies (and dollars!) that can be better saved.

What is the dollar value of one minute operating a waste hauling fleet?

Here at Routeware we talk with professionals in the waste industry every single day. They consistently tell us that it costs on average $100 per hour to operate a waste collection vehicle. In particularly expensive areas, such as New York and San Francisco, the average cost is around $150 per hour (or more). This includes the cost of the vehicle, maintenance, repairs, insurance, permits, fuel, driver wages, driver benefits, tolls, and tires.

So simple math tells us that if 1 truck operating hour costs a business $100 on the low end, then…

The value of 1 minute to a waste hauling business equals

$100 ÷ 60 minutes = $1.67

There’s not much you can buy with that amount. It won’t change your life or your business, right?

Unless you start collecting a minute here and a minute there. The thing about minutes is they add up fast…amazingly fast.

Why should you care about the value of a minute?

Because in waste hauling, minutes add up faster and with more impact than you would expect due to the size, scale, and repetitive nature of the business.

Here’s an example:

How much would it be worth to your fleet over the course of a year if every day, each route saved one tiny minute?

First answer using your gut sense. Given the size of your business, what do you think that would add up to over a year’s time?

Next let’s figure out how much it actually impacts your bottom line.

How to calculate the yearly dollar savings to your waste management business if you just saved 1 minute per truck per day

Start with:

The number of trucks you run each day, on average

The number of days per week you run routes

Cost per hour to operate a truck (Most folks use $100 per hour unless in a more expensive area of the country)

Calculate the value of saving 1 minute per route per day in your fleet operating costs using this formula:

# trucks × # days per week × 52 weeks per year × $ per hour ÷ 60 minutes = savings realized for 1 minute per route per day

Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a fleet with 25 trucks that runs 6 days per week. The calculation for this fleet is:25 trucks × 6 days per week × 52 weeks per year × $100 per hour ÷ 60 minutes = $13,000 in savings

Just saving one minute on each truck’s route, each day will realize a total of $13,000 in trucking operational costs for a waste management business over the course of a year.

1 minute/truck/day is a conservative estimate. If you are on the hunt for minute savings across your fleet, you will likely find many minutes that can be put to better use. In the above example, if the same 25-truck fleet:

Saves 5 minutes per route per day, that would be an annual savings of $65,000

Saves 15 minutes per route per day, that would be an annual savings of $195,000

So if you are able to identify even just 15 minutes per route per day that could be eliminated, consolidated, or optimized – that is close to $200,000 per year that you can save your waste hauling business.

Routeware customers report, on avergage saving 30 –60 minutes per route per day! (Not to mention additional revenue from more logged extras and other benefits.)

]]>https://routeware.com/value-of-a-minute/feed/0How to Attract, Keep, and Reward Waste Hauling Drivershttps://routeware.com/attract-keep-reward-your-drivers/
Tue, 27 Feb 2018 20:11:47 +0000http://routewaredev.com/?p=773by Tom Malone, CEO We don’t have to tell you that the driver shortage is a big issue in the waste hauling and recycling industry. You already know how hard it is to attract—and keep—solid,

We don’t have to tell you that the driver shortage is a big issue in the waste hauling and recycling industry. You already know how hard it is to attract—and keep—solid, smart, dependable drivers. But what solutions are there to the driver shortage – and how does software and hardware address this?

The traditional approach to finding drivers is to offer one-time driver incentives, such as signing bonuses or assistance obtaining a CDL. But in the long run, these measures have a hard time reversing the reality that current career drivers are aging out with fewer new drivers coming up to take their place. So even as demand is increasing, the labor pool is decreasing.

4 Driver Shortage Solutions for Every Business

1. Position Your Company as the Employer of Choice to Combat Driver Shortage

Instead of struggling to keep up with a 95% driver turnover rate in the industry and a diminishing number of new drivers available, change your focus and become the employer of choice for drivers who want to work for you. You do this by rewarding them, on an ongoing basis, for the behavior that helps increase your bottom line and improves your customer satisfaction rates.

2. Define Metrics and Targets for Driver Reward Programs

Defining targets is something easy to say, but in reality, while determining critical metrics may be simple, measuring drivers against them is harder. If you’re going to base compensation, benefits, or other rewards on specific driver behaviors, you’d better be sure you have solid data to back up your decisions.

When we set up a customer with our Routeware fleet automation system, they are able to track and monitor the data on what the drivers are doing, and analyze it to determine how drivers measure up to pre-determined metrics. Thanks to our robust reporting pulled directly from the on-board computer devices and peripherals, you can easily manage and then reward your staff based on what works best for your company culture, your employees, and your specific work environment.

With Routeware’s fleet automation system in place, you have solid data to help you coach, train, and reward your drivers.

3. Create Coaching Plans to Foster Improvement

Measuring and rewarding obviously has advantages, but it won’t work if it only provides penalties to the employees being tracked. The goal is not to micromanage a driver’s every move, but to enable continuous coaching and improvements that benefit the driver. Employees in any business do better if they understand expectations and if the company actively manages those expectations. It is the same in waste hauling fleets, especially if the expectations are tailored to the uniqueness of each route and each driver. Nobody wants to be a bad driver, especially if they know they will be rewarded if they succeed. This concept is already accepted and demonstrated in sales force management, where goals are set and rewards are earned, and people strive for their own “personal best” against known targets.

4. Diversify Rewards and Benefits to Keep Your Best Performers

With the Routeware system in place, you have indisputable metrics and easy-to-understand visualizations based on objective data. This means you can reward drivers fairly and equitably. Thanks to these new efficiencies gained from using the Routeware system, you will have the added revenue to potentially raise compensation or add benefits such as a 401K, extra time off, or even a point-based reward system, thus reducing driver turnover. This ensures your business will attract higher-quality new employees as you rise above the competitors to become the employer of choice.

Need to get on top of your driver churn problem? Contact us todayfor more information on analyzing, optimizing, and rewarding your drivers with the Routeware system.

Remember the movie, Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, about the Oakland A’s winning strategy? The basic premise is that by using rigorous statistical analysis on the data around players, positions, and salaries, a small-market, limited-budget team sought out players who were undervalued by other teams, and number-crunched their way to a winning team.

What if you could apply the same theory to your waste hauling business?

Let’s face it: there’s a lot of waste in the waste industry—everything from too many go-backs, not tracking “extras” revenue, too much non-service time by drivers, high idle times, etc. But how do you, as an owner or supervisor in a field service organization, know what changes will have the most impact to your bottom line? How do you decide what issues to prioritize? Do you just go by your gut instinct, intuition, and “affirmation bias” of which drivers are doing well and which aren’t?

There’s a better way.

By adding fleet automation management software to your organization, you’ll be able to track literally millions of points of data to know where you’re spending—and losing—the most money.

For example, consider idle times. With the Routeware system in place, you can see instantly, by driver and/or by route, how much time is being spent idling, allowing you to accurately coach specific drivers on the behaviors that end up costing your organization money. Or, maybe you’ll find out that high idle times aren’t really an issue with the majority of your drivers, but not charging for extras is. You can see at a glance the average pickups per hour for each driver, along with averages for your fleet overall.
And, just like in Moneyball, you’ll be able to identify your undervalued players—the drivers who are doing everything right but who may be currently operating under your radar.

Armed with the data on everything from Average Drive Time and Average Time Speeding to Driver Distance and Total Heavy Acceleration—to just name a few reports available—you can determine where to focus the needed changes to your processes, employees, and overall fleet.

Want to know more? Contact us and request a DEMO of our software or our ROI calculator, to see how partnering with Routeware will create a “winning team” environment at your organization.

“Comprehensive route management tools lead to fewer trucks and lower labour costs because they increase driver productivity,” said Tom Malone, CEO of Routeware, the Portland, Oregon-based provider of solutions for route management. “A driver that can safely do 1,000 pickups a day is more profitable than one that does 800. Operator productivity drives fleet expenses and truck count up or down, so it’s sensible to measure and manage factors that affect productivity.”

]]>GRAND RAPIDS NEWS: Grand Rapids’ “Smart Cart” Trash System is About to Get Smarterhttps://routeware.com/grandrapidssmartcart/
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 23:24:55 +0000http://routewaredev.com/?p=238GRAND RAPIDS NEWS: Grand Rapids’ “Smart Cart” Trash System is About to Get Smarter Soon the city’s public services department will be able to log the exact location of every cart as it is tipped,